Born Mar. 4 (15), 1789, in Moscow; died Feb. 21 (Mar. 4), 1872, in St. Petersburg. Prince, Russian statesman, and big landlord.
Gagarin became a senator in 1831 and a member of the State Council in 1844. In 1849 he was on the Secret Commission when it investigated the case of the Petrashevtsy. While a member of the Secret Committee and then of the Main Committee for Peasant Affairs (1857-61), he held an extremely reactionary position on the peasant question. Upon Gagarin’s proposal, the State Council adopted the article on the so-called darstvennyi nadel, which still further reduced the peasants’ land tenure. In 1864, Gagarin became chairman of the Committee of Ministers. In 1866 he was chairman of the Supreme Criminal Court in the D. V. Karakozov case.